Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Darius the Great Is Not Okay, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Friendship
Family
Persian Identity and Culture
Mental Health, Depression, and Connection
Bullying
Summary
Analysis
The one customs officer on duty looks half asleep. Darius is surprised that he’s pale, with green eyes and auburn hair—he doesn’t have a turban and a full beard (though lighter hair is more common in northern Iran). The officer checks Mom, Dad, Darius, and Laleh’s passports, asks why they’re visiting, and then speaks briefly to Mom in Farsi. He then welcomes the family to Iran. Moments after the family starts walking, a second customs officer steps in front of Darius and tells Darius to come with him. Customs Officer II tells Mom he wants just Darius. They argue for a moment in Farsi, and then he leads Darius away.
Darius is, in some ways, ignorant about Iran, despite being Persian himself. Iran, after all, isn’t a single homogenous country: there are men like the first customs officer, who seems barely able to do his job and also look less stereotypically Middle Eastern. This visit will, in this sense, be a learning experience for Darius as he figures out what Iran is actually like. It’s very concerning when the second customs officer takes Darius aside: it seems like the family may encounter issues entering the country.
Themes
Darius can’t stop thinking about a two-part Star Trek episode, where Cardassians kidnap Captain Picard and interrogate him. The interrogator keeps shining four lights in Picard’s face and trying to get him to say that there are five—and in the small room where Customs Officer II takes Darius, there are four lights in the ceiling. Darius hands over his passport and explains that Babou has a brain tumor, and that Dad has the plane tickets proving that Darius is going to leave the country. (Hopefully Mom got Dad to stop; Dad is known for not stopping and once didn’t realize he’d lost toddler Darius in the grocery store.)
This is a really scary, traumatic experience for Darius. The only way he knows to make sense of it is to relate it to something he knows really well, which happens to be Star Trek. Darius’s thought process as he wonders if Mom got Dad to stop shows some of the ill effects of the way Dad treats Darius. Darius doesn’t really trust that Dad will be there for him, given that Dad has lost his son before without knowing. Now, the stakes are even higher than they’d be in an American grocery store.
Themes
Customs Officer II digs through Darius’s messenger bag. He puts aside The Lord of the Rings and Darius’s schoolwork, but he picks up Darius’s medicine bottle and asks what it’s for. Darius says he’s depressed, and as people often do, the officer asks what Darius is depressed about. The answer is nothing, so the officer says Darius probably just eats too much sugar. Then, he asks about the logo on the messenger bag—and lights up when Darius says Dad is an architect. The officer lists several gorgeous buildings Darius should visit. He hands Darius’s belongings back and welcomes him to Iran. Mom holds tight to Darius’s arm the rest of the way through the airport. Darius wants to tell Dad about his interrogation, the places the customs officer mentioned, and how impressed he was that Dad is an architect, but Dad is too busy keeping exhausted Laleh upright.
It seems like things are going downhill as the customs officer shows Darius what Mom meant about Iranian culture not treating mental health the same way American culture does. Here, the answer is for Darius to try harder; it has nothing to do with brain chemistry. Hearing this is, in its own way, traumatizing and invalidating—the officer is blaming Darius for something Darius can’t control. It’s particularly unsettling when the officer’s demeanor changes so suddenly upon learning Dad is an architect. Dad’s perfection, Darius finds, might actually be a boon in some contexts.
Themes
